Crystalline silicon carbide intermediate layers for silicon thin-film solar cells

This work describes a concept to create photovoltaically active silicon thin-films on ceramic substrates. To achieve this, the ceramics are coated with a diffusion barrier of crystalline silicon carbide. On top of the diffusion barrier the light absorbing silicon layer is created by zone-melting recrystallization of poly-silicon and subsequent epitaxial thickening of the absorber layer. All the processing steps were hereby performed at atmospheric pressure, to allow high throughput and low costs.